<nettime> The Talkative Planet. What is to be done?

[Rob van Kranenburg <kranenbu@xs4all.nl>]

greetings, Rob

The Talkative Planet. What is to be done?

To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart - Bruce Springsteen???

???No, I don't claim to know anything about such things, and I'm not laying
down the law. But I feel it. I have been visited, or spoken to, 'Ramer said
gravely. 'Then, I think, the meaning was direct, immediate, and the
imperfect translation perceptibly later: but it was audible.???

???Every half century or so this title shouts out to a poor messenger
somewhere. It is like the grin trying out faces. Robert Hughes wrote about
that grin trying out faces and finding fault with all of them. Not one face
seemed to suit the grin to perfection. Yet somehow we ??? humans ??? able
to see the faces, the damage done, still we ask over and over: what is to
be done? As if we have any agency.???

humor

???Let us start with the obvious. In WWII the Germans redecorated large
parts of Berlin with wooden structures. They painted a lake or some woods
and hoped the Allied pilots would get lost. One evening the British send
one plane. That plane dropped one bomb. Made out of wood. That wooden bomb
was the perfect response. The plane could have been shot down, the pilot
lost, the plot broken. Still they flew. To start with the obvious: there is
no more reciprocity in response of this kind. Even in the harshest and
toughest wars fought by men, there was humor; not irony, no laughter, no
'fun', but humor, some thing of old that honored the process, the fact that
living and dying are two sides of one coin, flipped by a hand unseen, yet
twirling with a sense of style, of creating meaning out of
nothing.???Throughout history humorless periods have been indicators of
ontological changes. It is as if all lubricants have been sucked out of the
engines that drive societies and everyday life. Every thing lies painfully
clear in the light, Nietzsche said. Yes, painfully clear it lies indeed. No
form, nor ritual, no 'let's pretend at least we are doing fine', no
'style'. In the words of Propp, every possible diversion of action within
the morphology of the tale at hand has been tried. The tale itself has run
its course. There is no logical or illogical ??? say 'fluke' ???
possibility of regeneration or innovation. It has branched out to its
fullest. Then it starts wondering and above all, it starts to worry. If it
is not worrying, it is making plans to leave. And try out a new face, a new
tale.

read on

http://www.shareconference.net/en/text/talkative-planet-what-be-done


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